The five worst book covers ever

When Penguin posted the artwork for their new edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Facebook, users guessed it was a new cover for Lolita or The Valley of the Dolls. Here’s our selection of the most preposterous and frankly poor covers ever printed – but what have we missed?

No Charlie Bucket? No gloopy chocolate or shiny golden ticket? Penguin’s new cover reimagines Dahl’s classic as 1960s Wyndhamesque horror, robotic alien children stranded in a stark asylum. As the most voted comment on Penguin’s Facebook announcement reads: “Sorry, I wouldn’t buy the book with this cover.”

Orwell’s bleak vision of the future looks kind of sexy on this misleading cover of 1984. Photograph: Crisol Plural

Check out the Big Brothers on Signet’s sexed-up 1956 version of Orwell’s dystopia. It’s almost funny to imagine hapless readers buying this based solely on the cover, then getting the fright of their lives. (I said almost. Sorry George.)

Because teenagers can no longer read anything that isn’t red, white and black; it’s a rule. Photograph: Harper Collins

This Twilight tie-in gives Emily Brontë a black background – to indicate the depths of hormonal despair – and a nice flower. How many teenage readers wound up throwing this across the room, scowling, “I didn’t want something with substance”?

Anyone for Princess Buttercup as a wild shaman with a bird on her head and snakes coming out of her backside? And why are there so many skulls? I’m willing to bet that illustrator Ted CoConis’s take sold loads, though. Because, y’know, breasts.

After a storm of complaints over its 50th anniversary edition of Sylvia Plath’s novel of Ivy League despair, Faber and Faber released a statement saying they were aiming the cover at readers who had never picked up Plath before. “Our intention for this cover was that the image of the expressionless woman ‘putting on her mask’ and the discordant colour palette would suggest ambivalence and unease,” they said, before helpfully pointing out: “The copy on the back of this edition makes reference to the narrator’s depression and suicide attempt.” Oh. Good?